Exploring Alternate Futures

Boyd, L. (2011). Exploring Alternate Futures. Green Teacher (94), 35-38.

Reviewed by Greg Barmby, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

In the article “Exploring Alternate Futures,” Lloyd Boyd presents the idea of futuring, a concept meant to explore the possibilities of what our future could look like, depending on the events to come.  Boyd is interested in the cause and effect our actions could have on the planet and puts forth the idea that thinking about our future can help us become more aware of the choices we make. According to Boyd, courses in future studies exist in over fifty universities around the world, but are lacking in the middle and secondary school levels.  An article in The Futurist, by Stephen Millet explains that “this process [of futuring] will help us to make decisions in the present that will have positive long-term consequences” (p. 39).  Boyd agrees with this idea, arguing that students need these skills to be able to deal with the rapid changes occurring in the world today.  In response to this way of thinking, Boyd suggests a project based approach to teaching futuring in a classroom, which he presents in three steps - scenario writing for alternative futures - the creation of artifacts from the future, and predicting past events or “backcasting” from a preferred future to the present day.

            In the first part of the project Boyd describes his four step approach to scenario writing.   Firstly, students brainstorm and analyze current trends by organizing them into categorical systems.  Second, they identify the various effects, beliefs and causes of these trends and make prediction on what the outcomes will be.  Third, the students synthesize their analysis and place it within an established framework that the teacher has created, or use the three created by Allen Hammond known as Market World, Fortress World and the Transformed World.  In the final step of the scenario writing process, students write their own scenarios in a detailed format that inspires creative thinking and thoughtful questioning.

            The second stage of Boyd’s project involves the creation of what he refers to as  ‘artifacts’ from the future. This includes items such as creative videos or simple letters and postcards written from citizens using the new future perspective.  According to Boyd, these creations allow students to think on a more local level, and help them better understand the impact their future scenarios would have on the daily lives of future citizens.  The artifacts would also serve to assist students in their comprehension of the scenarios they created and how accurate they may be in their depiction of the future.

             The third and final stage Boyd presents is the idea of backcasting, in which students choose their preferred vision of the future and work backwards to highlight policies, programs and actions from the present day that will help them realize their future scenario.  Boyd believes this exercise will help students create positive changes today by investigating prevention strategies that may help their futures to be realized.

             Boyd’s article can be directly related to critical thinking, in that the students will analyze, classify, infer, imagine and identify various concepts, and come to their own conclusions using this information. I believe the ideas in this article are transferable to the classroom and could be adapted in multiple ways, particularly in social studies.  For example, exploring multiple futures from particular points in the past, or creating “what if” scenarios, in which students alter history and create alternative outcomes.  Scenarios could be created such as “What if Germany was not defeated in World War II?” or “What if Rome never fell?”

The idea of writing scenarios could also be adapted for students on a more personal level, by giving them the opportunity to create their own future for the next 50 years of their life or longer depending on the goals of the educator.  The students may gain a better understanding of the long-term trends occurring in the world, and place themselves somewhere within those movements.  This would give students the opportunity to “be the change [they] want to see in the world” (Ghandi).  The scenarios could also be written on a more local level, having students examine their school, neighbourhood or town, which would allow them to see the potential they have to make to make changes in their own community.

 Creating artifacts from the future has a lot of potential for educators as well.  With this strategy, students could create artifacts from the past and present them in an art-gallery type format to the class.  This may allow students to begin the process of viewing the world from another’s perspective.  Creating artifacts in multi-media formats would also help to integrate both English Language Arts and Technology, making the activity more of a cross-curricular activity.

The idea of backcasting could help students create charts or webs of both events that occurred in the past and events that are happening in the world today.  This would guide students understanding of the cause-effect relationships that exist between the past, present and the future.  As an example, students could look at a topic such as our ‘dependency on oil’ and use this issue to backcast and create multiple scenarios to change the energy we consumed in our world today.   With the current debate about the Enbridge Pipeline in Northern BC, students could use their critical thinking skills to analyze this debate and create story-lines based on events that have not yet occurred.  These questions have a lot of cross-curricular potential as well, and a teacher could meld these ideas with the current science curriculum in alternative energy sources.

Middle and Secondary school students need to be engaged in their learning, and learn about concepts that matter to them.  Teaching futuring will allow students to think more about the consequences of their actions and choices they make.  Futuring is a concept I believe can easily be incorporated into any social studies curriculum, and if used correctly it can be a way to engage students in their attempt to understand the past, realize the present and envision the future.

Millett, S. M. (2011). Five Principles of Futuring. Futurist, 45(5), 39-41.

Boyd, L. (2011). Exploring Alternate Futures. Green Teacher (94), 35-38